Ocean World Fishes For

New Homes For Dolphins

July 30, 1994|By TAO WOOLFE Staff Writer

FORT LAUDERDALE — Ocean World is looking for new homes for its 12 Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, possibly as far away as Burma.

The United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees the transfer of captive dolphins, said there is no room in the pools of the almost 40 domestic marine parks. And the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has come up with a list of marine parks outside the country that might want Ocean World's dolphins when the park closes Aug. 31.

Ocean World, citing financial difficulties, announced earlier this month that it was closing.

The foreign parks are in Egypt, Mexico, Greece, Hong Kong, Burma, the Bahamas and Curacao.

But a solution might be as close as the Florida Keys, in the native waters of many Ocean World dolphins.

Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary, on Sugarloaf Key, 17 miles north of Key West, this week wrote a letter to Ocean World introducing itself and offering to provide a home for all 12 dolphins.

"We could take them all by December," said Lloyd Good, founder of the sanctuary.

But Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary is not without risk because it's an experiment.

It will be the first sanctuary of its kind in the country that would be dedicated to returning captive dolphins to the wild, or, if the dolphins don't want to go back to the sea, to provide them with a retirement harbor, Good said.

"That's correct. It would be the first," said Scott Smullen, spokesman for the USDA's National Marine Fisheries Service, which would have to approve any releases into the wild.

Smullen said the service has approved a display permit for the sanctuary, which allows them to keep up to 12 dolphins in its 11/2-mile harbor on the Gulf of Mexico. The new dolphins will be kept in pens until they can be reintroduced into the open sea.

In 1973, Good's family bought Sugarloaf Lodge, a beachfront resort with an unusual feature: its own dolphin.

"Sugar," was captured by the previous owners. The dolphin still lives in a the manmade harbor behind the lodge. There is an opening into a half-mile cove which leads to the ocean, but Sugar has chosen to stay.

Good was 11 when his parents bought the lodge. He grew up seeing the dolphin every day.

The Sugarloaf sanctuary, so far, has only one dolphin.

However, the sanctuary is about to become home to three trained dolphins from Ocean Reef, an exclusive Key Largo club that has had dolphins for years. Because of new federal laws, the club had to either let the public in to see the dolphins or give them up, said Bay Proby, spokesman for Ocean Reef. Proby said the transfer "is a done deal," except for getting the final USDA permits.

The Navy, which is trying to give away many of the 50 captive dolphins it has trained for war exercises, wants to give Sugarloaf five of them within the next few weeks, the USDA's Smullen said.

The Navy is waiting for final inspections and permits.

Ocean World's spokesman, Kevin Boyd, has said the 29-year-old Fort Lauderdale park cannot simply let the marine mammals go back to the sea, for a variety of reasons.

Among them: It is unknown how well they would fare without regular feeding, medical care and vitamins; they could introduce diseases unknown in the wild; the survival rate among dolphins released into the wild from captivity is unknown; and they could be eaten by sharks.

Boyd said he's not sure whether Ocean World will accept Sugarloaf's offer.

"I can't say whether [Ocean World) would consider it or not," Boyd said. "I know there's interest from Sugarloaf. All I can say is negotiations [with other marine theme parks) are going on."